Great Barrier Reef has changed Due to Global Warming

The Great Barrier Reef present off the coast of Australia is experiencing massive bleach during the last two years. Scientists have found that a large section of corals have died and most of the coral reef has altered forever.

A close observation done by scientists when they look at the World’s largest coral reed system, they find that the extent of damage was very high and the temperature of the water also gone up due to global warming. They have mapped the patterns of the corals which is spread over more than 1,400 miles and monitoring about the dead corals so that the study will help them in future to understand the reefs.

Mark Eakin of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch said that “This has really been an event that is changing the character of these reefs, and now that these marine heat waves are coming more frequently and more severely, we expect this sort of damage to keep occurring on coral reefs around the world.” He added by saying that the bleaching of the corals has changed the whole coral living on these reefs and killing other corals due to high temperature, as a result, they remain “flattened or homogenized.”

A study which was published in the journal Nature said that Hughes along with his 15 colleagues has reported about the “unprecedented “, “radical” and “catastrophic” of the coral during the year 2016. They said that about 30 percent of the Great Barrier Reef’s corals are already lost and the most severe damage occurred in the isolated northern sector.

The researchers of the coral reef said that the entire ecological identity of reef system was already changed. Hughes said that the branching type corals which provide shelter to the fishes are being replaced by “ bulky, less intricate dome-shaped corals.”